Ensho Therapeutics just launched but is already generating buzz with its phase 2-ready clinical program for inflammatory bowel disease a series featuring companies creating breakthrough technologies and products a biotech developing an oral version of a treatment for IBD president and executive chair of Ensho Therapeutics The company’s vision: Ensho wants to develop an oral α4β7 inhibitor that could be a breakthrough treatment for inflammatory bowel disease by controlling how T cells regulate inflammatory responses in the gut Ensho has hit the ground running with a phase 2-ready clinical program for IBD after acquiring a portfolio of oral α4β7 integrin inhibitors from Eisai’s gastrointestinal subsidiary EA Pharma the only commercial α4β7 inhibitor is administered by injection or infusion and an oral option would create a market-differentiating alternative “There's a real opportunity here to be transformational and have an asset that is transformational for the IBD field,” Bitritto-Garg said “There's a lot of excitement around α4β7s in particular.” “We've already far surpassed the amount of interest I thought that we were going to get .. We're going to be able to raise a lot more money than we had originally anticipated.” A strong start: Ensho plans to develop its lead candidate for ulcerative colitis after a positive phase 1 program conducted by EA Pharma Three other assets were also included in the licensing deal and Bitritto-Garg said Ensho’s “scientific team will be exploring the attributes of the three follow-on compounds to our lead to look at potential opportunities with those assets.” Ensho has assembled a strong executive lineup to usher the candidate into the next stages. Bitritto-Garg is a veteran of the biotech and biopharma equity research world She also worked on the industry side in business development at Eisai The company’s C-suite includes heavy hitters who Bitritto-Garg called “a world-class management team in IBD.” three of its executives are former Telavant leaders former chief medical officer of the Pfizer-partnered company “The entire team that we're building behind him is a team that he's essentially assembled over the last 15 years or so,” Bitritto-Garg said The road ahead: Eli Lilly’s announcement of the Morphic deal just days after Ensho’s launch drummed up excitement and interest as the startup embarked on its first round of financing Bitritto-Garg said they’ve raised their original fundraising target multiple times “We've already far surpassed the amount of interest I thought that we were going to get,” she said “We look back on that original target and chuckle a little bit because we're going to be able to raise a lot more money than we had originally anticipated.” Bitritto-Garg said the company’s focus will shift “100% to … getting a phase 2a study up and running with our lead compound Bitritto-Garg said they aim to have a phase 2a study starting in the first half of 2025 and a phase 2b study starting in the second half of 2025 “We're going to move forward with enrollment as quickly as possible,” she said “And so we anticipate having phase 2a data in 2026.” Get the free daily newsletter read by industry leaders The two obesity leaders are pulling on all levers to stay on top of the market Subscribe to the PharmaVoice free daily newsletter Subscribe to PharmaVoice for important stories The free newsletter covering the top industry headlines By 2024-01-21T05:00:00+00:00 ITALY: Revenue passenger services on the newly-built Bari – Bitritto line began on January 9 following an inauguration ceremony the previous day The standard gauge electrified single-track line is 11·9 km long with 2·5 km running parallel to the existing Bari – Taranto main line and the rest on a new alignment The €110m project was co-financed from the European Union’s Recovery & Resilience Fund A station to serve Bari’s San Nicola football stadium is under construction for opening in 2026 The line is managed by national infrastructure manager RFI with services operated by national operator Trenitalia under a contract directly awarded by the Puglia region There are 14 trains each way from Monday to Saturday, and five pairs of trains on Sundays and holidays. The journey time is 20 min, with simultaneous departures from each terminus and trains crossing at Bari Santa Rita station. The short platforms mean only Alstom Jazz ETR 324 electric multiple-units are able to operate on the line and now we have to calibrate the timetable to the needs of users’ said Puglia regional Councillor for Transport Anita Maurodinoia Mayor of Bari Antonio Decaro said the new railway ‘allows residents to reach the city centre in just a few minutes bringing people and places closer together and heavily influencing the quality of life’ when it would have formed part of the 950 mm gauge network now known as Ferrovie Appulo Lucane ITALY: Ferrovie del Sud Est has completed electrification of the 81 km line running from Bari through Casamassima and Putignano to Martina Franca FS Group subsidiary FSE said when the electrification was inaugurated on October 16 ITALY: Bari to Barletta local train operator Ferrotramviaria has unveiled the first of 11 Pop electric multiple-units being supplied by Alstom Ferrotramviaria has now taken delivery of five of the units with the remaining six to be delivered a rate of two per year in 2024-26 ITALY: Infrastructure manager Rete Ferroviaria Italiana has marked the start of boring work for a tunnel between Telese and Vitulano on the new Napoli – Bari alignment Minister of Infrastructure & Transport Matteo Salvini attended a ceremony on March 15 to mark the point at which .. Site powered by Webvision Cloud "Pick your spots and wear a helmet," Bernstein analysts led by Nikhil Devnani said in a report to clients in late May launching coverage of US emerging internet companies — a batch of stocks like DoorDash "The market is scrutinizing whether these are viable economic models to begin with We think the companies we cover are," but their financials are muddled by spending on growth initiatives "The onus is now on them to prove it," they added to be precise — is testing stock analysts' calls Insider's annual list this year features an analyst who set out to become a physicist but found a love for investment research one who has followed the upstart brokerage Robinhood since its initial public offering an analyst who was early to covering cannabis and another whose passion for tracking food-and-beverage stocks has roots in cooking with his mother as a child.  analysts had to be 35 years old or younger work in sell-side equity research at a Wall Street firm and stand out from peers through their work Insider editors selected the finalists from nominations submitted by colleagues Reporters interviewed each analyst about their careers and the sectors they covered Here is Insider's list of the top up-and-coming stars of equity research on Wall Street: It didn't take Grey very long to decide that accounting wasn't for him After nearly two years auditing banks for Deloitte He moved over to equity research and began studying cannabis and retail stocks he became part of the first Wall Street team covering cannabis He was hired away by JPMorgan Chase in January 2018 and began covering soft-line retail he decided he had to pursue the opportunity pot stocks had to offer "I saw a pathway within cannabis," he said at a smaller bank willing to take that step and then kind of make a name for myself." Grey joined the firm in March 2019 and became Alliance's head of consumer and cannabis research He and his team cover Canadian cannabis companies companies with more ancillary connections to the industry pot stocks became favorites with investors and the first cannabis exchange-traded funds were launched as investors are more risk-averse now and cannabis to the frustration of many of the same investors valuations are as low as they've been in the short history of the industry He thinks the US cannabis market should be worth $105 billion in 2035 Blanchard covers a fast-evolving industry of companies mining for lithium It's a fitting choice given the evolution of her career worked in private equity at Breakwater Investment Management before moving over to investment banking where she became an mergers-and-acquisitions associate and She has spent almost six years in that role Blanchard told Insider it turned out to be a "sweet spot" for her "You have to look at the macro environment You have to look at the dynamics of the supply chain You have to interact with the clients — obviously "It's also trying to understand how everything flows together and is being impacted." Blanchard covers companies that search for and mine metals but she has to be aware of what battery manufacturers and automakers are doing and governance investing and clean technology which is used in batteries for electric vehicles and electrical-grid storage Demand for the metal is climbing rapidly and will triple from about 500,000 metric tons in 2019 to 1.5 million by 2025 That means lithium supplies will be a major concern for a lot of companies some automaker CEO made a comment on an earnings call that he didn't really care about lithium," she said very interesting for lithium and for solar and clean tech And I think we're just at the beginning of that transition and revolution So I'm pretty excited to remain in that industry." A couple years after Jenkins started at Goldman Sachs as an equity-research analyst on its machinery team her bosses thought it might be time for a change.  that probably my career trajectory on that team was capped just by the nature of the team — there was a senior analyst So they moved her to cover biotech stocks on a new team and she and the team's leader initiated coverage on about 20 stocks.Jenkins now leads the team and has since grown the team to six biotech analysts She said she'd thrived under the autonomy of being the lead analyst on a number of stocks "I've really enjoyed owning the relationship aspect of having coverage myself," she said "I get to own the relationship with the management teams I don't have to ghostwrite for somebody else who was promoted to vice president of equity research earlier this year started her career at Goldman Sachs as an intern in 2015 during her time studying economics and finance at the University of Alabama She began a full-time position at the firm in 2016 her high-school economics teacher helped spark her interest in the subject and her lifelong love for reading and math pushed her toward her current role "I don't know how many jobs you get both things," she said Carpenter has launched research at JPMorgan on some of the most recognizable consumer-facing internet stocks in recent years.  He relishes the hands-on approach he's able to take in covering a sector where he can observe the companies as a user.  "Having a passion for the sector and for the products is incredibly important," he said adding: "How do you cover a stock like Stitch Fix if you've never used the actual product?" Carpenter joined JPMorgan in 2012 from Bank of America where he started his career in 2009 and worked in the investment bank's equity-capital-markets group Carpenter realized his passion for internet companies while his time working in investment banking coincided with high-profile initial public offerings like those of Twitter But he didn't like the transactional nature of the business A banker may work with a company just once before moving on to the next deal He was drawn to the idea of following a company's ups and downs on a deep level in some cases starting at the beginning with its market debut He transferred to JPMorgan's research arm in 2015 Carpenter feels strongly about connecting with and offering advice to others looking to transfer into research He is an advocate for internal mobility and development connecting with colleagues interested in making a shift "There are three parts of this job: writing whether with clients or investors or the media or the company," he said it was just really focusing on developing and balancing those You need to be strong in all three to really succeed in this job Woodring finished his football career at Middlebury College as its program's all-time leading tackler and earned an NFL tryout.  Woodring said he still took his mindset from the football field to his job as the executive director of IT-hardware equity research at Morgan Stanley.  and I want to make sure that I'm at the top of my craft," he said and now it's using different skills that I've acquired in and since college." Woodring started his career in finance as an analyst at Simms Capital Management and Talson Capital Management before going back to business school at New York University he took an internship at Morgan Stanley in 2014 and has stayed ever since.  climbing the ladder from vice president of equity research to director Woodring said his best call has been on Logitech which he initially rated as "overweight" in fall 2020 The stock then rose from about $80 a share to about $140 a share in mid-2021 when Woodring downgraded the stock to "equal weight" and eventually "underweight." The stock now trades at about $55 a share "I've been able to catch most of the ride up and the ride down on that call and one of the reasons I think it's been one of my best calls is that for most of the last 12 months with an underweight rating on the stock," Woodring said.  "Don't be afraid to go against the grain if the data is leading you in that direction," he said of his advice to younger equity researchers Suchoski's first exposure to finance wasn't within equity research Suchoski began in the industry on the buy side working side by side with portfolio managers at First Eagle got me super excited and super interested in this type of research and analytical type of role," Suchoski told Insider.  After spending a short time at Janney Montgomery Scott covering real-estate investment trusts He now leads the firm's research coverage of some of the biggest names in payments from Visa and Mastercard to PayPal and Block.  Suchoski said he particularly appreciated getting to use the products of the companies he covers I can test out contactless payments at the store "Being able to dive deep into a sector and know it really well is pretty unique." Covering fintech names has also been an opportunity for him to dive more into venture-backed private-market payment startups which Suchoski said were locked in close competition with public companies.  "A lot of these private companies are competing with the companies that we cover in the public sector," Suchoski said whose last valuation was around $100 billion They're competing with the public companies that we cover so we have to understand what they're doing Suchoski pointed to his outperform rating on Bill.com whose stock rose from $20 at its IPO to as high as $300 before retreating this year "The thesis really boils down to this idea of software and financial services blending together," he said.    Katai worked at a handful of firms before her career "got going" at Deutsche Bank "What I like about this job is that no day is the same and every day brings new challenges," she told Insider Katai credits her predecessor as lead analyst with giving her "visibility," being open to her ideas and encouraging her to find her own approach "Having that person that's going to be helping you along in your career is extremely important So I feel very fortunate that I found that person," she said Katai has gradually expanded her coverage to include more and more types of retailers "It has been a really great experience so far," she said "I get to discover what it is that I am good at and really focusing on how to actually train an associate." A key lesson for her is that different people have different ways of approaching work And she's had to learn how to find ways to check in and communicate with everyone on her team and keep them feeling positive "One of the things that I'm learning is how to be much more nimble Silberman thinks being a millennial gives her a different perspective on the restaurant industry than some of her peers.  Silberman — who covers companies including Dunkin' and McDonald's — sees brands capitalize on viral social-media trends A lot of these companies' strategies have been more digitally forward on platforms like TikTok and Instagram allow me to be a little bit more on the pulse because so much is done through social media and the companies are recognizing that," she said.  The restaurant industry was hit hard during the early months of COVID-19 but some companies have since come out stronger two years after the pandemic began Silberman launched her coverage at Credit Suisse in 2019.  "It was one of the hardest-hit sectors," she said but the restaurants in particular because you're shutting down a business that relies on social activity." One call that stood out was Dunkin' Brands which was underperforming its valuation in June 2019 She double upgraded Dunkin' to outperform in April 2020 "There were certain elements of the business model that made sense in any consumer environment: sustainability of the business models So it was about north of 80% upside to when I had a double upgraded it Dunkin' was acquired by Inspire Brands at the end of 2020.  She had initiated coverage of Papa John's at a neutral rating in June 2019 and upgraded it in September 2019 and she anticipated what their playbook would be it would help his career in finance one day most prominently the video-game subsector.  "Never did I think that playing video games at a young age would actually help out later on in life in my career," he said "Knowing the ins and outs of how game mechanics work why a gamer will choose to play a game or pay for something in game it actually ended up being very valuable in terms of making stock picks and making calls within the industry." working at KPMG after graduating from New York University's Stern School of Business in 2011 with a finance degree Lu worked on a project for Goldman Sachs and decided to go into finance securing a job as an analyst with Magnitude Capital.  covering the broader market before settling on covering internet and video-game stocks He's since become the lead analyst for 16 stocks when the firm introduced "Call of Duty: Warzone," a free version of the popular game While many in the industry worried that the free version would hurt revenue prospects of the "Call of Duty" title — which sells for about $60 — Lu argued that "Warzone" would offer more exposure for the paid game and boost its revenue prospects "The brand awareness increased fivefold with Warzone," he said Lu's success earned him a top-20 ranking by Institutional Investor among large- and midcap internet-stock analysts in 2021 Elias has risen up the ranks at Cowen since he joined the firm in 2017 as an associate to cover the telecommunications space a former longtime analyst who Elias counted as a close mentor Synesael guided him as he learned the ropes of sell-side stock research "I rose up being intensely focused on the research on the day-to-day execution of the associate role going deep within the names that I cover," he said.  Elias tracks companies that underpin the vast communications ecosystem such as the major cybersecurity and cloud-computing company Akamai and the large data-center operators Digital Realty and Equinix.  I believe he approaches his career like a soldier would relying on a combination of his strong work ethic wrote in a recommendation post for Elias on LinkedIn.  But working on the sell side wasn't always in the cards for Elias He studied engineering at Columbia University and set out to become a physicist But he had friends at school pursuing careers in finance and they encouraged him to consider a similar path He started delving into the investment-research world.   he started working as an analyst at the hedge fund Xanthus Capital Management before joining Cowen.  His influence and work now stretch beyond his own team Elias helped establish the Cowen Black Network with other Black colleagues.     "We really felt that it was important to assemble a group at the firm of Black employees mainly to provide a safe space for the employees to be able to speak," he said adding that the group also hoped to provide professional-development opportunities for employees Having covered the banking sector for more than a decade at KBW Perito has had a ringside seat to the rapidly changing digital trends upending finance — and has charted a new course by covering some of the biggest names in fintech.  a part of the brokerage and investment banking firm Stifel after graduating from Villanova University in 2011 he was placed in the bank's rotational program but quickly discovered a passion for research Perito was the lead bank analyst covering smaller-market-cap banks across Pennsylvania But KBW's bank research team doesn't have a lot of turnover and he found himself looking for ways to stand out among a seasoned group of vets "I figured out early on that I would have to be creative if I wanted to stick around," he said.  When KBW's director of research went looking for an analyst to cover Meta Financial — then a $300 million bank known for its prepaid-card-issuing business — Perito raised his hand.  "That was actually really an important moment for me pivoting more towards this digital banking and fintech role that I'm in now because really prepaid-card issuing was the earliest example of banking as a service," Perito said He launched an outperform call on Meta Financial whose stock rose to new highs during the pandemic The company had long been a banking partner to fintechs but is now more than three times as large as it was when Perito first made his call Perito's coverage has expanded to include companies like SoFi "I often joke with investors that the things we were writing about for years and no one cared all of a sudden everyone wanted to know more about banking as a service and digital banking and the technology power in the banking industry," Perito said Bitritto-Garg launched her coverage on biotech stocks at Citi in March 2020 just as markets were being pummeled from the fallout of COVID-19.  She has been building her expertise in the central-nervous-system space since 2015 researching companies that provide therapy for diseases like Alzheimer's So she was confident that her calls would pull through the pandemic I think I've really established my franchise and I've been able to make some good calls and establish some good relationships with companies and with investors," she told Insider a company that's developing a drug for Alzheimer's patients She said: "I made an out-of-consensus call there — making a call that their phase-three study was unlikely to be successful just based on the study design and the types of patients that they were enrolling My call ended up working — the study did not work." Bitritto-Garg began her analyst career at Baird in 2015 where she covered large-cap biotech companies where she worked for the company's neurology business group and eventually focused on Alzheimer's and dementia she worked as a large-cap biotech-research associate at JPMorgan for eight months before moving over to Citi A big inspiration for Bitritto-Garg has been her parents who both have Ph.D.s in chemistry: Her father was a lawyer focused on patent and environmental law and her mother was a marketing executive at a large chemical company Devnani started in a new role at Bernstein: an analyst leading a small newly created team covering US emerging internet companies He joined the firm as a research associate six years ago and he is now in the analyst's seat for the first time Devnani worked with Bernstein's large-cap internet analyst before starting on this team last year and publicly launching their coverage this spring.  it's never your name at the top of a research report But I think the mindset to have is to treat it as if it is," he said "If you take ownership and view it as your own it's a powerful mechanism because you start to put more work into it to ensure that it's the best it can be." ("Pick your spots and wear a helmet," he wrote in his initiation report to clients on May 23 particularly for unprofitable tech stocks.")  He tracks seven names in the midcap internet-company space: DoorDash The food-delivery company DoorDash is a top pick His team is optimistic about the long-term growth of on-demand delivery services "It's difficult to own anything in internet right now because things probably get a little bit worse before they get a bit better," Devnani said "But it's one where we've done differentiated work on the underlying margin profile of food delivery which often gets a bad rep for being a bad business Galbo's childhood passion of cooking with his mother has definitely influenced his life and career.  and it was something that was important to me and I just had an interest in," Galbo the director of equity research at Bank of America and has covered the food-and-beverage since May 2019 and it's kind of hard to separate football and those types of things," he told Insider and I'm always kind of laughed at — I'm the guy from Buffalo covering chicken companies."  he initiated a buy rating in April 2020 and was able to catch the bottom of its stock at about $61.  a large frozen-french-fries manufacturer that had a rough 2021.  "We've been pretty adamant that things are starting to improve — there should be a pretty nice inflection as we get into the back half of this year and into next year," he said Galbo set a "underperform" rating for Beyond Meat "I think they overestimated the market for alternative protein," he said "I think there were some estimates out there that maybe were a bit aggressive We think that the sales and market opportunity is relatively optimistic." Any client who relies on RBC Capital Markets research and uses environmental and governance considerations while making investment decisions has interacted with Mahaffy's work.  launched the firm's first dedicated ESG research just two years ago from regulators scrutinizing companies' environmental claims and disclosures to an array of new ESG-labeled products attracting billions Mahaffy has had a front-row seat to those ups and downs.  Her research analyzes big-picture ESG themes for investors One of her recent reports highlighted overall sustainable equity-fund flows and sectors in which companies are seeing improvements in their ESG scores She found her passion for investment research when she was a student at McGill University and a member of an investment-management program there taking specialized courses and managing an investment portfolio through the school Mahaffy graduated and joined Credit Suisse where she was an equity strategist for seven years before joining RBC in 2017 Mahaffy started fielding more and more questions from clients about ESG investing she sent out her first dedicated ESG report One initiative she's particularly proud of is a product called ESG Contenders a list of names that RBC rates highly and show strong ESG attributes but are not yet highly owned in actively managed sustainable funds and may be attractive investments "The feedback I hear from our clients is that they appreciate that data-driven approach we're taking with our work," Mahaffy said Mahaffy is involved in a program RBC offers to women college students in their sophomore year Goldman Sachs' Nance is perhaps best known for his coverage of the online brokerage Robinhood Nance led Goldman's research on Robinhood through its IPO last July and drew headlines this April when he downgraded the stock to a sell rating and he's more likely to focus on his lead coverage of a wide variety of payments names from Toast to Remitly and AvidXchange (three other fintech companies that have gone public in the past year).  "Getting that full seat internally to cover the broader payment space that's been probably the biggest thing that's happened to me since I've been at Goldman," Nance told Insider.  Nance has brought a wealth of experience to his payments coverage he began covering regional banks and consumer finance before moving on to work on a variety of financial-services firms while mostly focusing on credit-card issuers like Capital One and American Express recently producing a launch report on Visa While Nance has appreciated picking up coverage on some of the biggest names in payments he's found a particular interest in covering smaller high-growth fintechs coming on to the public markets "It's just been fascinating to learn about that because these companies are small enough where if you have one or two interesting nuggets or tidbits about what's going on in their market — one partnership that can move the needle for their company one acquisition where you execute on the synergies over three years — it's a huge underappreciated earning story," Nance said Portfolio of Oral Selective α4β7 Inhibitors Acquired from EA Pharma Phase 2 Clinical Program in Ulcerative Colitis to Start in First Half of 2025 with Lead Asset Seasoned Executive Team with History of Execution in Inflammatory Bowel Disease Drug Development toJoin Ensho on July 1 Veteran Biotech Equity Research Analyst and Former Eisai Staffer Based on results of an extensive Phase 1 clinical program as its lead drug candidate from the portfolio The Phase 1 program evaluated single and multiple ascending doses of NSHO-101 in over 180 healthy subjects Results demonstrated favorable pharmacokinetics (PK) and pharmacodynamics (PD) NSHO-101 was generally safe and well-tolerated in healthy subjects Results of the Phase 1 program support Ensho’s plans to initiate Phase 2 clinical development in the first half of 2025 president and chief executive officer of Ensho “We are thrilled to acquire this portfolio of oral selective α4β7 integrin inhibitors derived from AJM300 an oral α4 inhibitor that has been approved in Japan for induction therapy in UC along with my history with Eisai and EA Pharma’s impeccable standards for continuous improvement in drug development led me to found Ensho around this portfolio We believe NSHO-101 could be a transformational alternative therapy for patients who continue to suffer from IBD despite multiple lines of therapy.” Ensho has recruited a world-class team of executives with decades of experience in inflammatory and gastrointestinal (GI) disease drug development Bitritto-Garg to develop and potentially commercialize these important oral agents for the inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) market “I am very pleased to welcome to Ensho our seasoned team of executives The team’s decades of experience in IBD drug development will enable us to not only move quickly into Phase 2 clinical development with NSHO-101.” “Joining Neena to advance Ensho and its portfolio of promising IBD assets was a tremendously attractive opportunity given the significant unmet medical needs in IBD the high potential and validated mechanism of α4β7 oral clinical development candidates to offer differentiated attributes to patients and physicians looking for therapeutic alternatives In collaboration with our newly formed Ensho team many of whom have a long history of working together we look forward to expeditiously advancing our lead asset into Phase 2 development early next year.” Bitritto-Garg’s experience working at Eisai on business development and in management of the company’s key alliance with Biogen Inc which is currently being launched in multiple countries for the treatment of early Alzheimer’s disease She brings to Ensho nearly a decade’s worth of experience as an equity research analyst covering the biotechnology sector including the neuroscience and immunology therapeutic areas she led biotech and biopharma equity research strategy at multiple global banks Bitritto-Garg is a graduate of the Roy and Diana Vagelos Program in Life Sciences and Management (LSM) at the University of Pennsylvania and holds dual degrees in Biochemistry (B.A.) from the College of Arts and Sciences and Economics (B.S.) with a concentration in finance from Wharton a seasoned team of executives with decades of experience in the discovery and management of biotechnology companies in the inflammatory disease and IBD space will join Ensho who will join Ensho as chief executive officer Suzanne Vyvoda will act as chief operating officer will join the company as chief data science officer Neena Bitritto-Garg will continue to oversee the team as founder Kanwar will join Ensho as chief executive officer His strategic development and execution of inflammatory disease programs spans more than two decades and includes roles as chief medical officer of Telavant Holdings a Roivant company acquired by Roche in 2023 where he oversaw the clinical development of RVT-3101 in UC; chief medical officer of Applied Molecular Transport where he led the company’s IBD-focused clinical development programs; vice president head of clinical development at Protagonist Therapeutics where he also led clinical programs in IBD; and clinical domain lead for IBD at Gilead Sciences where he also supported programs in liver fibrosis/NASH Kanwar was an associate professor at the University of California focused on researching the role of the gut adaptive immune response in both HIV infection and IBD from the University of Minnesota and an M.D He completed his residency at Rush University Hospitals in Chicago and a fellowship in pediatric gastroenterology at UCSF Whitney will join Ensho as chief scientific officer He brings to Ensho over 25 years of experience in drug discovery and development in autoimmune/inflammatory He has led multiple drug discovery projects as senior vice president head of preclinical development and translational science at Applied Molecular Transport; vice president Inc.; director in Gilead’s inflammation and oncology research group; and was one of the earliest scientists at CGI Pharmaceuticals where he led biology and project teams until its acquisition by Gilead Andy was an NSF postdoctoral fellow at the University of Geneva Vyvoda will join Ensho as chief operating officer She brings to Ensho over 20 years of execution and management of drug development and clinical operations programs including as vice president and head of development operations at Telavant a Roivant company acquired by Roche in 2023; vice president of development operations and head of clinical operations at Applied Molecular Transport; director of clinical operations at AbbVie Inc.; senior clinical program manager at Gilead and senior manager of clinical operations at BioMarin Pharmaceutical Inc in sociology and economics from the University of Utah Weng will join Ensho as chief data science officer She brings to Ensho two decades of expertise in applying statistical and design methods throughout the diverse aspects of research and development programs across broad therapeutics pipelines in biopharmaceutical industry including immunology and inflammatory diseases head of biometrics and data science at Telavant a Roivant company acquired by Roche in 2023; vice president head of biometrics at Applied Molecular Transport; senior director and statistical head of respiratory TA at Theravance Biopharma in cancer biology with a minor in biostatistics and an M.S from the UCLA Anderson School of Management About Selective a4b7 Integrin Inhibitionα4β7 is a cell surface receptor that helps regulate the migration of immune cells to the intestine and plays a key role in controlling inflammatory responses It binds to mucosal addressin cell adhesion molecule-1 (MAdCAM-1) which is expressed on intestinal venules and is upregulated in response to inflammation This interaction helps facilitate the transport of leukocytes and recruitment of effector lymphocytes to the gut mucosa in IBD Because α4β7 is found primarily in the gut this localized action provides immune cell inhibition where it is most relevant potentially minimizing side effects and preserving overall immune cell function Decades of research validate α4β7 inhibition as an anti-inflammatory mechanism in IBD which has been further substantiated by the approval of a commercially available antibody there are no approved orally administered α4β7 inhibitors agents for the treatment of IBD About NSHO-101 (also known as EA1080)NSHO-101 is a novel selective α4β7 integrin inhibitor designed for the potential treatment of patients with IBD The Phase 1 clinical program for NSHO-101 evaluated 184 healthy subjects to assess safety PK and PD of single and multiple ascending doses of NSHO-101 NSHO-101 demonstrated target engagement in this Phase 1 program There were no appreciable increases in peripheral lymphocytes NSHO-101 was generally safe and well tolerated Ensho plans to initiate Phase 2 clinical development of NSHO-101 as a potential treatment for UC in the first half of 2025 Contacts:Media:Aljanae ReynoldsAreynolds@wheelhouselsa.com Investors: info@enshorx.com Copyright ©2025. All Rights Reserved. Design, CMS, Hosting & Web Development :: ePublishingCookie Settings This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks The action you just performed triggered the security solution There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page it's not an easy time to be picking stocks these times can be make or break as institutional investors and other clients look to them to provide critical insights into what stocks can outperform the market.  Insider highlights rising stars across the world of equity research We asked the 2022 cohort to pinpoint the biggest challenges that they saw coming down the line for their sectors.   Many of the young analysts we talked to had risen through the ranks by covering nascent sectors and the companies they cover are facing unprecedented challenges as customers change the way they spend and inventors pull back on riskier ventures.   They explained what they were seeing and how they were thinking about the challenges and possible winners and losers in their coverage areas The as-told-to excerpts from our interviews have been edited for length and clarity Read our full list of rising stars of equity research.  Carpenter covers 15 companies, including Vimeo The challenges these companies face are just the volatility whether that's people not being able to go to bars and meet people and so advertisers are less likely to pay for Yelp.  The volatility makes it very hard for a lot of these companies the concern right now is uncertainty. What is demand going to be like in are you going to cancel your Netflix subscription first or are you going to cancel your Tinder subscription first It's figuring out: If we assume everything costs more and disposable income is going to be lower then what's best positioned to weather that is probably the biggest focus Devnani tracks seven names in the midcap internet-company space: DoorDash There are a couple of things happening: On one hand these companies now are at a scale where they have secular tailwinds underlying them But they're at a scale now where you cannot escape the cyclical pressure.  we don't know what the macro environment is going to bring But there's a chance that we go through a recession in the next six to 12 months That is going to have an impact on these companies So there is a learning curve for everybody here to better understand how some of these markets evolve through those kinds of periods That creates one big unknown that's hanging over the group The other thing that is potentially a bit more interesting is that irrespective of what happens on the macro front These companies now are having to find religion on free cash flow and profitability after years of access to cheap capital and being geared toward growth at all costs The positioning from growth stocks in the market to more value stocks Particularly names that are unprofitable today they've been the weakest return year-to-date We think with a recession looming — economists predict a recession probability of 30-40% within the next year — that's going to continue to have a negative impact on unprofitable names It's really going to be these bigger players the video game publishers that are profitable And so the sentiment there and the multiples they'd command is going to be a lot less than the others Suchoski leads the firm's research coverage of some of the biggest names in payments My view is that money isn't supposed to be free When you have a ten-year yield that's at 1% You're seeing that work its way through the system now It just means that some of these newer players probably have to slow down the hiring Another interesting angle here is that some of these incumbents have been penalized because these new startups are coming and just throwing cash at the problem.  There's this interesting dynamic with private companies where you've seen a lot of funding in fintech and payments those companies are going to potentially be hurt just because you're getting attacked less frequently or at a lower degree.  Nance leads coverage of a wide variety of payments and fintech names We've reached the point where investors are looking for names that wherever they are on a profitability basis now they're trending towards profitability over the next two to three years It's hard for a lot of these companies to make that pivot when a month or a year ago people were telling them to grow at all costs.  For companies that haven't reached that level of scale Capital markets are not open for them to raise additional capital or it would be prohibitively dilutive to existing investors to do that.  When you don't have current profitability or profitability in the next three years one of the most common questions we get is 'Where's the valuation support for a name that trades at three or four times sales with no profitability and no balance sheet support?' That's a really common question without a really good answer Perito's coverage includes companies like SoFi One challenge the neobank model has right now is that there's just a total mismatch in what they're paying to acquire these customers and then the revenue generation activity that these customers are bringing Another challenge with this whole group of stocks right now is it's hard to make a call on banks and fintech without having some type of macro view That's just the point of the cycle where we're at If you think we're not going into a recession There's no hurdle that you can get over without making that call.   The tightening dynamic is number one It was easy to get capital for biotech companies for years and so they're having to get more creative about their funding We just had the global healthcare conference that we host every year and I think that was a big theme for every company in biotech that we talked about Many of them are making hard decisions about what to prioritize in their portfolio and many of them are extending their cash runway I'd say most top of mind are near-term priorities and the clinical programs they think have the best chance for success small biotech companies go public – companies as early as preclinical which means they're not even going into human studies for one to two years They have started to go public over the last few years that have substantial valuations which probably would not have happened.   Part of what we're seeing right now is there's a lot of publicly traded biotech companies They don't have near-term catalysts and that makes them a funding risk where public markets are not readily accessible We're not seeing companies do IPOs or secondary financings unless they have some meaningful catalysts and are able to raise off of that.  Mahaffy's research analyzes big-picture ESG themes for investors.  there are still some challenges on the data side While we've seen corporate closures grow and improve over the last few years as the focus on ESG has really skyrocketed standardization can still be challenging.  One way we try to get around that is working to develop different indicators that we can use to assess companies on ESG.  we work in partnership with our data science team here at RBC to develop tools to assess company sentiment or sentiment around ESG-related activities Grey covers cannabis companies and consumer products goods (CPG) companies like Green Thumb Industries and Verano Some investors are wary of buying into industries where government regulation is a major issue The stocks rode a tide of optimism about legalization in early 2021 Investing in cannabis is not for the faint of heart You're seeing a market where a lot of it does depend on changes at the federal level which can be unpredictable and could have a major impact this is one of the biggest growth opportunities within the CPG space Follows retailers including grocery stores Many of the companies Katai covers are considered defensive and investors have bid up their shares as they grew more worried about a recession many of these stocks made big moves after the COVID-19 pandemic because they were seen as e-commerce winners "We're now getting into an environment where we're really starting to see variances between the best in class retailers with really good merchandise and then the ones that we would say potentially over earned during the pandemic that are now going to rerate," she said She says companies that have flexible supply chains will have a big advantage over their competitors companies will focus on sourcing supplies and products closer to home so they are not as vulnerable to supply chain disruptions Elias tracks the vast communications ecosystem such as the major cybersecurity and cloud-computing company Akamai and the large data-center operators Digital Realty and Equinix Four of the companies that I've covered in the last year have been acquired So from a public equity research analyst perspective the fundamentals from a demand perspective for the data center industry are strong.  The supply is becoming tighter in the market So that's definitely one thing that represents a challenge to data center operators but that has also linked itself to greater pricing for the data center operators.  one thing that has been a headwind is higher input costs We're seeing inflation manifest itself in various aspects of these businesses the cost of raw materials that go to build a data center The restaurant industry is a challenging industry Its relatively low margin and costs have been so high: commodity costs So it's really pressuring the profitability of restaurants – that's certainly a challenge Hardware is an industry where the capital outlay is typically considered a capital expenditure purchase And when there's belt-tightening going on in the world whether that's an enterprise limiting its budget or a consumer deciding to push of a purchase for a year or two typically hardware feels that more than other industries tightening wallets as inflation at 40-year highs impacts not only the low-end consumer but effectively every income demographic which is used in batteries powering electric vehicles Blanchard says that demand for lithium and other metals is climbing and even when there is enough supply to meet manufacturer's needs It's likely to keep pushing prices higher for now Producers thought they would be able to mine more lithium and rare earth oxides by now but the process of ramping up production has been slower than they had hoped partnership between the upstream and the downstream,"   Tracks the food and beverage sector including names like Beyond Meat Inflation numbers are even more elevated than what we're seeing across the broader economy We get a lot of questions about the consumers – about trading down and that becomes a big area of concern the exposure that some of our companies have to private labels – store brand versus a branded product That's been super topical in just about every conversation that we have.  The one name that kind of stuck out as we've done a lot of our work is Hormel – they're a big bacon and lunch meat player They are beating against a lot of private label companies but they also actually just bought the Planters snacks business from Kraft last year and that actually added to their private label.  If this was forwarded to you, sign up here It's a difficult time to be picking stocks: rising interest rates And after a first brutal half of the year in the market please do not peek at your 401(k) if you are the least bit anxious institutional investors and other clients look to Wall Street firms to provide critical insights and analysis into what stocks and sectors can outperform the overall market.  We searched for the standouts among analysts no older than 35 who work in sell-side equity research in the US The finalists were picked from nominations submitted by colleagues In our top 16: One who was among the first to cover the cannabis sector and several who went into research after trying other corners of the finance industry.  Check out Insider's 2022 list of the rising stars of equity research here. 4. While the collapse in crypto has been brutal, it has been contained. "This contagion did not extend into the traditional banking and finance sector," Michael Hsu, the acting US comptroller of the currency, tells the Financial Times 7. Jared Kushner's private-equity firm, Affinity Partners, has done its first deal, investing in Mosaic, an Oakland, Calif.-based fintech that offers financing for residential solar installations, Axios reports